LITMIR.BIZ

      Peanuts has caused me almost as much anguish as has been suffered, through vast disappointment or the dastardly doings of fate, by so many of Charles Schulz’s wondrous characters.

      The first of my tales of woe concerns a planned visit with Mr. Schulz in his Santa Rosa home, as arranged by a good friend of his, the noted California newspaper editor and columnist, Neil Morgan. A day in July was set. My anticipation began to grow, like that of a teenager about to meet a rock star. At almost the last moment, a news assignment took me to another corner of the globe. An understanding Schulz agreed to postpone the meeting to another date when I would be back in the States.

      And then, tragedy struck — he suffered the cancer attack from which he would not recover. That huge part of the world’s population that adored him grieved and I, deprived of the opportunity to at least briefly share his company, was a particularly stricken mourner.

      As did others who were luckier and got to know Schulz personally, perhaps I would have assumed the privilege of calling him by his almost onomatopoeic nickname, Sparky.

      Back there in 1922, just a few days after he was born to the wife of a barber in St. Paul, Minnesota, an uncle was so enchanted by his infant nephew he started calling him Sparky — after a horse, Spark Plug, featured in a then-popular comic strip called Barney Google. The nickname stuck, and Charles Schulz was called Sparky the rest of his life.